Jean Harper, humanities and fine arts, has received the Horizon Award, established in 1997 as a campus recognition of a faculty member who is early in his or her career and demonstrates excellence in the classroom.

Phil Bickel, English, has received the campus' Adjunct Teaching Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Trustees Teaching Awards have been granted to Peggy Branstrator, natural science and mathematics; Denise Bullock, behavioral and social sciences; Joanne Passet, history; and Markus Pomper, natural science and mathematics.

Three faculty proposals have received Teaching and Learning Awards from the IU East Office of Information Technology. John Cowling, accounting; Catherine Foos, philosophy, and Neil Sabine, biology, have received $1,068 for "An Application of Informatics to Improve Grading Process Technology." Emily Winburn, archivist and instruction librarian, and Joanne Passet, history, received $3,478 for "Oral History of Eastern Indiana." Sabine also received a $4,300 grant for "The Use of a Student Response System to Improve and Assess Student Learning in Biology Class." As part of the project, recipients will report the results to the IT department and contribute the findings about best practices to the Teaching and Learning Center as well as to a Web site used as a repository for use by others.

The STOP (Stop Taking on Pounds) Program is working with area youth from Indiana and Ohio to accomplish their goals of weight loss and a healthier lifestyle. Mary Folkerth, nursing, is one of the members of the Whitewater Valley Obesity Task Force. The task force was developed out of the need for a weight management program for children and adolescents. It is the only weight management program for children within a 70-mile radius of Richmond. Children involved in the program meet once a week for two hours. Each child and their parent/parents commit to 10 weeks with the program and then can continue to be followed if they wish.

Robert Ramsey, SPEA, made two presentations at the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Conference held in Chicago in March. The first presentation was entitled "The Nomenclature of Convicting the Innocent." The second was titled "Wrongful Convictions: Theoretical Explanations for the Differing Perceptions of Criminal Justice Actors" (co-authored with Kelly Boller and James Frank).